Ubisoft, one of the largest developers and publishers of video games in the world, during its quarterly report announced a number of important changes in the schedule of future releases – the management postponed the release of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and another of its games, and also canceled four projects at once, including ” battle royale” Ghost Recon Frontline. Immediately after that, the specialized gaming publication Kotaku, citing an internal letter from CEO Yves Guillemot to employees , reported that the publisher had begun full-fledged preparations for a recession.
Ubisoft (again) rethinks plans and schedule for future releases
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the next AAA game after The Division’s Avatar, first announced back in 2017 , but the first trailer was only shown at last year’s E3 . Initially, an open-world first-person action-adventure game set in the James Cameron universe was planned for late 2022. Apparently just in time for the premiere of the sequel to the original 2009 film Avatar, The Way of the Water is scheduled to premiere on December 16th. Now Ubisoft Massive plans to release the Avatar game between April 2023 and March 2024. There is no exact release window yet.
“We want to make [Avatar] a brand in the video game industry. It’s very important for us to come out with something perfect.”
Yves Guillaume,
Ubisoft CEO
At the end of June, journalist Tom Henderson reported that Ubisoft planned to release Frontiers of Pandora on November 18, 2022 – this date was reported by retailers, for whom the news about the postponement of the game was a big surprise. At the same time, the author of Kotaku says that certain difficulties arose during development, after which the producer of another significant title was transferred from another project to help the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora team.
Moved with Frontiers of Pandora for 2023-24 is an unnamed and yet unannounced “not-so-big-scale” premium game that was originally planned for 2022-2023. Probably, this mysterious project is a story game in the Assassin’s Creed series under the working title Rift.
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During a conference call with investors following the quarter, Ubisoft announced the cancellation of four future games. Among them are the problematic Ghost Recon Frontline and Splinter Cell VR . Two more games are unknown projects that have not yet been announced. Ubisoft did not provide any further explanation for this decision.
The tactical action-strategy Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (releases October 20) and the long-suffering open-world pirate action Skull and Bones (November 8) still remain on Ubisoft’s schedule this year .
Cost reduction and resource optimization
With the global recession approaching due to the war in Ukraine, the world’s leading companies and brands from various fields are massively cutting costs and slowing down the hiring of new employees, so Ubisoft is the next name in an ever-growing list.
Ubisoft traded €239.3 million last quarter, down 10% from Q1 2021 but slightly above the company’s own forecast. The share of “digital” sales is slightly less than 90%. At the same time, microtransactions and DLC provided 52.3% of the income. And while Ubisoft is still forecasting an improvement in financial performance for the year – expected profit of 400 million euros – the management seems to be already preparing for difficult times. This is indicated not only by the redrawing of plans, but also by other measures and changes in strategy arising from the Kotaku report.
In a quarterly report, the company referred to “adaptation to an uncertain economic situation,” and in an internal letter, a copy of which Kotaku received, Yves Guillemot says that spending for the near future will be reduced, leaving only the most “necessary” budget items and changing priorities.
“In the current economic climate, carefully and strategically managing our investments is more important than ever. Therefore, we must seriously limit costs, focus only on the essentials and question habitual actions and decisions, and at the same time rethink and reinvent ourselves as a team in order to gain advantages in terms of cost, flexibility and efficiency.”
Yves Guillaume,
Ubisoft CEO
Several employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Kotaku that Ubisoft’s various studios have almost stopped raising salaries, slowing down hiring of new employees and freezing budgets for ongoing projects. This new wave of austerity is being seen not only in game development, but in many other areas – already now Apple, Google, Meta and many other technology giants are preparing for a potential global recession.
Ubisoft’s new strategy – Assassin’s Creed + mobile games?
Assassin’s Creed (the series is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year) remains one of the few open windows of opportunity for Ubisoft, so going forward the French company is likely to focus on this media franchise as well as mobile games for obvious reasons (the recent Resurgence is proof of this). ).
In fact, Ubisoft has plenty of other problems as well: the development of such ambitious projects as Beyond Good and Evil 2 , the sequel to the beloved classic Action RPG, has completely stalled, and the leading developers of some major franchises are leaving the company one by one.
The next major reveal of Ubisoft Forward games is scheduled for September 10, at which, among other things, Ubisoft promises to talk about the future of the Assassin’s Creed series. In addition to the Project Rift already mentioned above, media reports mention another project in the Assassin’s Creed series – Project Red. But so far there are a lot of conflicting reports about him. Authoritative Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier noted in a July 21 report that Project Red will become part of the Assassin’s Creed Infinity online platform . And it is not yet very clear what exactly this game will be.
